Last week I posted on Twitter that leaving chicken stock (recipe below) out on the stovetop all week was fine and I got all kinds of mystified tweets about how could this possibly be safe. It is, and it’s a great way to have stock on hand all week for a quick sauce, a poaching liquid, an instant soup, add it to a stir-fry and thicken with cornstarch. You don’t need to go through all the straining and storing and labeling of stock and cleaning a big heavy stock pot. I do like to strain it out of one pot into another to get the bones out of it, but even that’s not strictly necessary to have easy chicken stock available most days of the week. [Update 8/24/2011: I should have clarified, provided that you Read On »

Dried beans and salt. Dried beans and soaking. Ask some chefs and they’ll tell you add salt in the beginning and the beans will never get soft. Some chefs have suggested that salt slows the rehydration of beans. Others say, the slower the rehydration, the better the finished bean (fewer broken ones), so it’s important to soak them overnight. Others say it doesn’t really matter, or it depends. One thing that is demonstrably true is that you don’t have to soak your beans overnight; if you want beans for dinner, put them in water and cook them till they’re tender or at least edible, no soaking, no blanching, just put them in a pot and cook them. Wanting to get to the bottom of this, though, and having little scientific knowledge of bean cookery myself, Read On »

Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark is the world’s top restaurant led by Chef Rene Redzepi. Learn about gastronomic explorers, the inter-relation of botany and weather, and how Redzepi became who he is, via Independent UK.